Bloomberg US fast-food giant Yum! Brands Inc. plans to refranchise its KFC restaurant business in Turkey as part of a global shift away from owning its own outlets. KFC Turkey will increasingly grow through its franchisees, the Louisville, Kentucky-based company said in an e-mailed response to questions, without providing details. Yum, which also owns the Pizza Hut and Taco ...

  Santiago / AFP Qatar Airways bought a 10-percent stake in LATAM, the largest airline in Latin America, the Chilean-Brazilian company said. The investment, first announced last July, amounts to 60.8 million shares at a price of $10 each, LATAM said in a statement. The airline — the product of a 2012 merger between Chile’s LAN and Brazil’s TAM — ...

  Bloomberg The board of India’s central bank approved the move to ban high-denomination notes less than three hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision in a televised address to the nation. Information on how many members favored or opposed the move isn’t ‘on record,’ the Reserve Bank of India said in response to queries from Bloomberg News ...

  Frankfurt am Main / AFP Lending to households and companies picked up in November in the eurozone, the European Central Bank said on Thursday, signalling that its efforts to encourage spending and investment are gaining traction. Loans to households in the single currency area grew by 1.9 percent year-on-year, compared to 1.8 percent a month earlier, the bank said. ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabian commercial bank deposits rose to their highest level this year in November, a sign that a liquidity crunch due to low oil prices is easing as the government liquidates foreign assets to pay its bills, official data showed on Wednesday. Bank deposits climbed to 1.624 trillion riyals ($433 billion) from 1.610 trillion riyals in ...

  DUBAI / Reuters National Bank of Oman (NBO) said on Thursday it had received a letter from Treasure Fleet International proposing to buy a stake in Oman’s third biggest lender. NBO will review the proposal; no legally binding commitments have been made and any deal would be subject to approval by shareholders and regulators, it said in a bourse ...

  Bloomberg The dollar dropped to a two-week low against the yen as traders pushed it through stops in thin trading amid a slide in Treasury yields. The greenback weakened against all its major peers on Thursday, with leveraged funds shorting the dollar against the yen as the currency pair continued a pull back from a 10-month high. Bloomberg’s dollar ...

  Bloomberg Investors may grow increasingly skeptical of the European Central Bank meeting its inflation target, with a host of factors — some beyond the control of President Mario Draghi — exposing the limitations of policy makers’ toolkit. The monetary authority’s efforts to bring inflation close to 2 percent “without undue delay” are being curbed by judicial hurdles to changing ...

  Kaiserslautern / DPA When Professor Sabine Hoffmann invites you to sit down, there’s a surprise in store: the individualized office chairs she’s helping to develop can ventilate you from below. At the push of a button, their little built-in fans can blow air on the back or bottom. Men in particular like this feature, she says, as it helps ...

  Relaxnews Twitter began streaming 360-degree video, allowing users to interact and get behind the scenes of live broadcasts. “Starting today, you can check out live, interactive 360 videos from interesting broadcasters and explore what’s happening with them,” Twitter’s Alessandro Sabatelli said in a blog post. “You’ll be able to get an inside look with well-known personalities and go behind ...